Posts Tagged ‘robotic arm’

Marita Cheng, Trossen Customer and founder of 2Mar Robotics was at CES last month demonstrating her latest Robotic Arms and control apps. Venture Beat has a great article on Cheng and her goals to use these DYNAMIXEL based arms to assist disabled person’s with everyday tasks.

Forum member dburongarcia has been doing research and development for using robotics to assist people with cerebral palsy. He’s using a Arduino Uno with USB Host shield to control a pair of motors in a motorized wheel chair, allowing the user to control the chair with limited head movements. The system can even be controlled via facial recognition running on a PC.

What really caught our eye was the second half of his project – using one of our PhantomX Reactor Robot Arms to help the user feed themselves! The video is in spanish, but the project speaks for itself.

Using 4 pushbuttons, the user can pick food from 1 of 3 bowls, put the food back in the bowl, or get a drink of water. There’s also a version that uses facial recognition to feed the user – we’ll have the video of that up soon.

Projects like this really mean a great deal to us – we truly believe that robots are an amazing tool for assisting humans. When we see that our robots have been integrated into thoughtful designs like this, we know we’re doing something right. We’re definitely looking forward to seeing more documentation and details on this project.

We’re constantly talking about new technologies, products and media that relate to robotics. Now, we’ve decided to let you in on the conversation, and to take a peek at the things that are piquing our interest.

(0:47)First Andrew talked about the MX DYNAMIXEL robot actuators, including their history, features and why he loves them so much.

(7:44) Andrew went on to talk about the amazing new DYNAMIXEL PRO Robot Actuators. These new powerful and precise actuators are are designed for full-scale robots. With up to 4x the torque of the current most powerful DYNAMIXEL, these servos have everyone at Trossen Robotics very excited. These actuators will be available in 2013, and you can get more information here

(16:27) Matt and Andrew went on to talk about ROBOTIS and why they’re so successful. They also shared some stories of their trip to South Korea (19:35) and some rarely seen footage of the trip.

(23:10) In the Sneak Peak section, they showed off some of our products that are currently in the pipeline. Matt showed off a new mobile robotics platform based on the Budget Bot. However, this platform uses the Arbotix RoboController and will have a built in robotic arm, making it an amazing mobile research platform. Andrew showed off the two new MX based Robotic Arms that Trossen Robotics will be releasing. These arms use the MX-28 and MX-64 DYNAMIXEL servos, making them our most powerful and smooth arms to date. They also gave us a look at a new joystick control panel for controlling our robotic arms.

(31:31)For this week’s Tips and Tricks, Matt shared tips about weights, both for testing load capacities on our robots, and for weighing down arms and cameras. Andrew showed us how to make a quick experimenter’s power supply with a computer power supply, and where to go once you need even more amperage.

The latest episode of TRTV follows the design and production process of our new robotic arm, the PhantomX Reactor. This behind the scenes look will show you everything from our initial design considerations and manufacturing problems to our test code and info on our inverse kinematics engine.

We’re proud to unveil our new arms, the PhantomX Reactor Robot Arm and its little brother the PhantomX Pincher Robot Arm. These arms are based around the Dynamixel AX-12 Robot Servos and are controlled with the Arbotix RoboController, so you have an amazing amount of control over these arms. The Reactor Arm also has a ‘Wrist Rotate’ option, to add another level of functionality to your arm.

Stay tuned for more videos about the design of this arm, as well as examples of all of the amazing things it can do.

The dynamic duo from Mad Lab Industries are at it again! Don and Jason needed an automated system to load materials in and out of their laser CNC, so they decided to build a robotic arm! Naturally them came to us for the newest Dynamixel Servos to power their arm. For the wrist this arm uses the tried and true MX-28T servos as well as the AX-12A servos for the gripper. The main arm joints use the new MX-64T servos to operate. Finally, to rotate the base, this arm uses a beefy new MX-106T servo to. The arm even has a custom cut control box for testing the arm and setting poses. Check out the video below for a demo of the arm’s movement.